Wolfsong
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: Sixshot, survival, and his unsung heroes.
1. Chapter 1

_Sixshot, survival, and his unsung heroes._

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**Title: **Wolfsong

**Warning: **Injuries and a Decepticon outlook on being in debt.

**Rating: ** PG-13

**Continuity: **IDW, post-squishing by Metroplex in Spotlight: Sixshot, post-trial in RiD/MTMTE.

**Characters: **Sixshot, Terrorcons.

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **Eabevella's Sixshot fanning.

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**[* * * * * ]**

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**Evidence**

His hand flexed once, twice. It went still, eventually. Evidence suggested that continuing to move his hand wouldn't make the rest of his broken body any more inclined to move.

**I'm here**

He wasn't going anywhere. He rather distantly thought that he should be concerned about that, but his mind had a tendency to dwell on the aches of burst seams and split welds. An ununtrium coating protected armor plating from breaking or melting, but it seemed that it did nothing to stop bolts from sheering through under sufficient pressure.

**Funeral**

Time hazed. The radiation from his exposed dark fission core hurt his body how it didn't when properly contained. Smashed joints and torn wires that would have mended as his aggressive self-repair systems went into overdrive simply didn't. The nanites mutated, died, or lost contact with his repair center. The massive mech who'd stomped on him hadn't killed him directly, but under the load of pain pulling his mind apart, he realized it was only a matter of time.

**Puppy love**

Whispers reached him through the pain. It was agony by now, but he was too tired to make distinctions. Like sound. The whispers were distant shouts, then not-so-distant shouts. They quieted abruptly, their sources coming to stand on the lip of the footprint he lay crushed in. He should know them. Of course they were here, whoever they were.

**Gloves**

He knew the feel of their hands before they touched him. It was unfamiliar, all the same. The way they touched him was all wrong, and he didn't like it. He flexed his hand, protesting, and a hand laced hesitant fingers between his own. The labored howl of his damaged ventilation system hitched, surprised, and he wondered who would dare hold his hand.

**Blackboard**

They pulled him out of the imprint in the ground, a perfectly drawn impression of pain he'd never before experienced in his whole long life and the war he'd fought in. Voices yammered at him. He didn't try very hard to listen. Everything felt both too real and entirely distant, current events written before his optics in a language he couldn't read.

**Muse**

The ununtrium had kept his armor from cracking, but raw metal now stood wherever the seams of two plates meeting had been. Familiar/unfamiliar clawed hands pulled him from the ground, and his neck, unsupported and snapped almost through, rolled back at an unnatural angle. From the burst seams of his head, circuit boards fell, sheets gliding from their slots.

**Magic**

His concerns, already distant, dropped away. Sixshot dimly, vacantly wondered what all the yelling was about. After a few seconds, he wondered what he'd been wondering about.

**Clean**

The universe was a blank slate. He woke to an endless darkness in the back of his head, an ache that he knew was somehow wrong, but he couldn't move his head out of the clamps to look for what was missing.

**Secret**

Exhaustion ate his curiosity. It didn't stop him from shifting restlessly in the clamps, but pain chained him down as much as the hold on his helm. When he stared up at the faces looking down at them, the words he wanted to ask them slipped out of his mind like water from a sieve, and only static poured from his damaged vocalizer. What they said in reply fizzled through the upper registers of his thoughts, there and gone again before he could grasp the meaning of the noise. It was a code, some kind of puzzle he lacked the key to, but the faces disappeared after a while, taking their secret sounds with them.

**Superstition**

He didn't remember what had happened, how he'd been damaged, or why they'd brought him here. The way they touched him, he thought he might be a relic, a sacred memento of a time before this strange, blank entombment. The clamps kept his head still, but it wasn't like the rest of him could move. This repair berth and quiet room were the resting place of holy memory he didn't have, a shrine to a broken war machine.

**Fantasy**

Sometimes, he flexed his hand. They got very excited when he did. He thought they thought it was a sign he was getting better. That might have interested him if he knew what 'better' even meant.

**Test**

The pain was_ blinding. _The slots in his opened helm burned, slices of rust-edged fire carving right into the center of his head and _twisting_. A terrible grating sound came from his broken vocalizer, a sob of utter agony beyond the mere bodily pain he'd adjusted to. Color and thought crackled as circuitboards connected and sparked, half-healed-over jacks and ports torn open to force completion. It felt like his optics popped and ran down the sides of his helm, glass boiling and mind spitting out the back of his head while he writhed and kicked inside a paralyzed body that didn't respond, _couldn't_ respond, he knew it should but it _wasn't_, it never would again, and it was the most terrifying thing he'd ever known, to be aware and awake inside a body that _just wouldn't function_ -

**Tease**

"Almost got it that time," someone said past the nauseous swirl of liquid thought and pain, but then everything stopped, and he no longer understood why those words filled him with triumph and fear in equal amounts.

**Storm**

There was a storm of activity around him, and he was the eye, the focus. He didn't understand. He flexed his hand, hoping in an open-ended way, and two hands filled his palm. For a minute, the storm calmed, and he held on to that stillness, inexplicably soothed.

**Strawberries**

The second time they ran the test, his scattered mind connected a brief memory to a fragment of chemical his olfactory sensors combed out of the air. It was a secondary system attached to his ventilation system, relatively undamaged amidst the huge amount of crushing damage he'd suffered. It had been feeding him data constantly. This was the first time he could use that data for anything, if only to eliminate strawberries from the list of what the one mech smelled like.

**Weapon**

Systems kept pinging at him. He didn't know what they were for, and he didn't know how to access them. An absurd amount of them seemed to have to do with weapons systems. He'd have preferred a user's guide to his nervous system. That, he dreamed of deactivating entirely.

**Beach**

He heard the ocean constantly. Waves washed in and out, in and out. It comforted him. It wasn't until they shoved the circuitboards back in his head and closed his helm that he realized he'd been hearing his own fuelpump beating in the hollow of his head.

**Lost**

"Can you understand us?" one of the mechs standing over him asked, and he reeled, flooded out of nowhere by a torrent of knowledge that had been missing for too long, and he was lost, lost, lost.

**Cry**

They stood around him, and his shaking, keening cry filled their audios. Understanding delayed for months on end drowned him. Flickering optics conveyed belated horror, and his single functioning hand desperately opened and closed. After a couple minutes of hesitation, five hands gripped it.

**Open**

It hurt more now that he was aware. His body was a wreck. The pain and injury were open to anyone. Worse was the intense awareness of vulnerability. It was one thing to be laid up, to be damaged to the point of immobility, but knowing that anyone could do whatever they wanted to him left him tender to the core.

**Tactile**

They still touched him. All of them, any time they could. He tolerated it because he couldn't move, because he couldn't communicate in more than static and grunts, because he owed them more than they'd ever owed him, because when one or more of them curled up in their altmodes and idly groomed his battered plating, it was the most life-affirming thing he'd ever experienced.

**Journey**

"Megatron turned Autobot," they tell him as part of their story for how they finally found him. No one ever came looking for him. No one cared that his mission went unfinished. The war ended without him there, and they'd been caught up in the aftermath for a long time, unaware that he'd been taken out of it until they just...left. To go looking for him. Starscream and Cybertron and Megatron and Optimus Prime were only peripheral concerns for them. Their journey ended only when they found him.

**Scowl**

He didn't know what he thought about what they said, and especially about what stayed unsaid.

**Hero**

Mumu-Obscura came up a lot, in muttered comments and excuses. He's their hero. It burned slow under his powercore, irritation that could fuel enough anger to kill them all. Immobilized by the injuries done to his body, it squirmed through his systems in heat that squinted the corners of his optics. Embarrassment. What he felt was embarrassment. Anger would have been easier to deal with.

**Morals**

He's paralyzed and at their mercy, a broken pile of armor that only communicated through little sounds and uncoordinated movements of one hand. They clearly didn't know what he'd do to stay alive, but he knew better than to assume that their help was freely given. That wouldn't be the Decepticon way.

**Engage**

He squeezed the hand in his when it would have slipped loose and the mech continued repairing him. The repairs were a slow-going torture, the pain more than he'd ever endured but easing in incremental amounts as time passed. He would not forget this agony, nor their part in ending it. The hand in his paused, surprised, and he squeezed again. His hand had a bit more strength in it than before. Soon. Paying down this debt would be a long process, but he'd be able to begin soon.

**Voice**

Static snapped through the room. He coughed and reset his vocalizer. This time, what came out of the mess of wires and fried circuits was a weak, hoarse, "...thank you."

**Awkward**

"Oh, uh, yeah." They hadn't expected that. "You're, uh. Welcome."

**Lower**

With his helm and throat patched, however crudely, they moved down his body. Anticipation hurt almost as much as his seared nervous system did.

**Cleansed**

Now that he could speak, the weird grooming sessions stopped dead. Even with his mind and throat intact again, he couldn't find the words to object to that. The sense of inclusion, of living while dead, weren't his to have. He wasn't one of them. Instead, he had the impassive scour of cleanser dumped over his armor, and hands that lingered in their work inside him. Neither left him feeling particularly clean.

**Go**

A motor relay connected, jolting sensation and live current up his backstrut, and the sound that came from his vocalizer shocked the whole room. They still weren't used to hearing him scream, much less hear the shrill, brittle sounds he couldn't control. He rasped, "Go!" and they fled, glancing back as if they wanted to stay.

**Shame**

He fell. He stood, he fell, he stood, and when he fell this time, he crawled. His joints sparked, half-connected wiring protesting. His limbs shook violently. Grim and silent, he crawled back to the repair berth and climbed slowly back to his feet. He snarled at the tentative knock at the door. No one would see him like this.

**Objective**

Walk. He could walk. If he could walk to the end of the room and back, then he would rest. Only then.

**Strength**

It didn't matter how overpowered his core or strong his armor; his body was too injured. Dizzy spells knocked him to his knees, then to hands and knees, and finally to the floor. It was cool against his heated body, popped tubes gushing coolant across the floor under him. He'd never felt weaker or more pathetic.

**Life **

He was still alive when they forced the door open and rushed in, but he didn't particularly want to be. Humiliation flamed hotter than his overworked body.

**Contempt**

He waited for their contempt.

**Wrong**

"You_ idiot_. You absolute _idiot_! We're not medics! Do you _get_ that? We're doing the best we can with the scrap we pulled out of the medicenter before we took off, and - you undid half the welds in one go! We don't have the supplies to replace everything you busted, and you just spilled your pump system across the floor trying to prove you're the toughest Phase Sixer ever, like, _okay, _we_ get it_. You can outfight an army, yeah, whatever, but you're a fragging _idiot_. A _fragging idiot!_"

**Sweeten**

They had no experience in holding a grudge against him. Their anger had an edge of nerves, as if they had to keep assuring themselves that it was okay to be mad at him. They'd always been so frantic for his attention and approval. The reversal was kind of alarming. He was bewildered by their anger at first, then fumed silently for a while, but he finally came to accept that he really had been a moron.

**Hands**

Mostly, he just couldn't stand their refusal to touch him. They would shove a cane at him, tools into him, glares in his direction, but their hands, so familiar with and to his plating, now never graced him with their touch.

**Oppression**

"Don't even_ think_ about it," snapped at him from every direction any time he stretched his stiff, gradually repairing joints. He meekly settled back on the repair berth every time. His nurses, the tyrants.

**Agony **

Transformation was agony. Something cracked deep inside, and he was afraid it was his transformation cog. It probably didn't matter. He wasn't sure he could muster the will to attempt to transform again, anyway.

**Return **

The shouting impressed him when they came back and discovered what he'd done while they'd been out raiding, or trading, or whatever it was they did to get the supplies to keep repairing him. He did what he hadn't been able to do in his bipedal rootmode: he submit to them as visibly as possible, whining low in his throat as he belly-crawled to their feet and licked their hands before he rolled, throat exposed. It was the Decepticon way. The strong ruled. He'd disobeyed, but he was tired of the careful, odd way they kept treating him. He wanted the security of knowing his place. He wanted, as much as possible, to return to normal.

**Protection**

There was a long pause. His damaged fuelpump fluttered in his chest. His back hurt, pressed into the floor in this position. He had little experience submitting to others. He supposed he'd have to get used to it. Repairs were brutally slow, and he would be under their protection until he could at least walk a straight line.

**Boxes **

They transformed around him. None of them had altmodes as large as his, but there were five of them to one of him. They boxed him in, nudged him into place, and laid on, around, and over him. He was buried at the bottom of the heap. It hurt. He didn't care.

**Animal**

They were animals, far more bestial than him. His altmode was a beastmode, not his mind. They didn't seem to make such a distinction. He grew used to it.

**Jagged **

Each of his six modes was different, but apparently it didn't matter much which mode he healed in. The jagged pieces of armor were still painfully obvious in this transformation. He felt better curling up in this form, and four legs were easier to balance on than two. He kept a sliver of his dignity crawling about on all fours if he was meant to be on all fours to begin with.

**Strange**

They acted weird to begin with, but they got positively strange once he transformed. He didn't like it, but he accepted that the position at the base of the pack hierarchy belonged to him, now. It'd be easier to act the part if they would stop acting like he led the pack.

**Measure **

"Can you walk?" He looked down at his paws, then up at the mech who'd asked. "I meant, can we move without you collapsing on us? We've found a better place." He nodded, but the optics on him doubted how truthful his answer was. It disturbed him that they knew him well enough to take his measure.

**Ashes **

What they couldn't take with them, they burned to the ground. He smelled the scent of his own charred fluids for days afterward. It wasn't until they spontaneously decided to groom him to within an inch of his life that he realized he'd been carrying the smell with them. He still smelled half-dead and dying. For all he knew, he looked it, too. They didn't seem to notice or care. They just groomed and groomed, flattening him to his belly on the ground with heavy paws on his forequarters and head when, flustered, he would have called a halt to the oddly intimate cleaning. They didn't let him up until they'd finished and the reek of ash was gone for good.

**Leave**

"We'll be back," they told him, and he didn't know if they were telling the truth or not. It's a cold comfort, those words. Whether or not they came back, he couldn't stop them from leaving.

**Fit**

He wasn't strong enough to do more than walk. It exhausted him, left him panting in the dust and dragging for hours. He couldn't fuel without leaks dribbling it out from under his armor where repairs hadn't reached yet. Humiliating as it was, he'd adjusted to refueling with an oilpan under him. The Terrorcons weren't well-mannered enough to even pretend not to watch as he leaked, but he bore their half-fascinated, half-disgusted gazes stoically. They were the ones fixing him, after all. They were used to the repulsive way he gooshed and dripped if he did more than lie there. The occasional muted giggle escaped when his tubes burped excess air, but it wasn't like he was fit for anything but the junkyard. He _was_ in rather laughable shape. He counted himself lucky they didn't laugh more often.

**Elusive**

Gratitude was as elusive as pride.

**Painstaking**

He waited until they powered down before he moved. He wouldn't ask for this. He refused. Limping, sore, and aching inside where repairs wouldn't help, he inched out of the makeshift medibay and found their bunkroom by scent. It was, uh, a powerful scent. He couldn't find it in himself to mind it, anymore. He picked the closest mech and clumsily nuzzled up against his side. The jerk of the mech waking would have been obvious enough to alert anyone, but he painstakingly ignored it as he pressed in closer, seeking warmth and a closeness he hadn't known he craved until it'd been given him. They hadn't denied him it, just stopped offering it. They let him have it again without comment.

**Unfold**

They were on and around him when he woke up, a long and blurry process of waking pain sensors and a mind that cringed from the data. Five heavy bodies snoring in his audios should have sent his head throbbing, one more overwhelming sensation among the flood. He sighed and relaxed, a tension inside his core unfolding, and powered down again.

**Guess**

There weren't many reasons Decepticons would help each other. Admiration of hus destructive capabilities aside, his best guess for why they were assisting him was unpleasant if only for his powerlessness. He didn't object morally to pandering to their evident attraction to him. It did hurt his pride, the poor remnants that lingered. He swallowed it down. He wasn't in any position to object.

**Quarrel**

"Isn't this what you want?" His voice was rough with disuse, poisoned by how helpless he felt. "I'm well enough for this. I'm in your debt. Take what you want." He raised his hindquarters, curling his lip to show a fang at the crude gesture, but it was the waiting that twisted in his gut, not the act itself. "Get it over with!"

**Brood**

"If that's why you think we're doing this - " The strained growl cut off, and he stared after the back turned on him. None of them came near him for days after that. His thoughts weren't kind, as much to himself as them.

**Effort **

He had to force himself out of the medibay to go looking for them.

**Now **

Their optics were cold, unreadable flat beast optics gleaming in the night. His legs shook, and he'd left a trail of fluids from the medibay to here. He sat down with as much quiet dignity as he could muster despite that. They judged him, judged the stagger in his walk, and swarmed down from the rocky outcropping they'd been sulking on. He steeled himself as they approached, not because of the offended anger in their bared teeth and narrowed optics, but because now he had to apologize.

**Stumble**

He fell on the way back to the medibay. Hard teeth locked onto the back of his neck. Smaller they might be, but he'd pushed his barely-functioning body too hard to fight back as he was half-dragged, half-carried back inside by the scruff of his neck. He went limp and let it happen. When he angled his head back, however, his rescuer dropped him like a rock and strode away, and he knew he wasn't forgiven.

**Fighting**

He had never launched such a backward campaign. Words were weapons; the weaker they were, the stronger their effects. Apologies devastated defenses. Groveling on his belly, wriggling and laying his head between his forelegs, stopped the angriest attack. Licking under their altmode chins, wet puppy kisses accompanied by repentant whines, softened even hardened Decepticon warriors. It was the most bizarre fight he'd ever been in. He had no idea who won, in the end. He didn't lose.

**Closing In**

He started out sleeping in the medibay. He recharged outside in the hall a day later. He laid across the door to their bunks two days into the fight that wasn't a fight. It was a cold-sparked strategy meant to corner them where he had easy access. Honest.

**Involved**

His body slowly healed. Tucked between two of them, snuggled under a wing on this side and two heads laid over the back of his neck from that side, he doubted much would change.

**Destiny**

None of them knew where this was heading. The war was over. It would be a long, long time before he was fully recovered, and there wasn't a war for him to fight in once he was. The others busied themselves repairing him, scavenging for parts and fuel to get by. It wasn't the kind of lifestyle that would last for very long, but maybe it'd last them long enough.


	2. Pt 2

Sixshot, survival, and his unsung heroes.

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Title: Wolfsong  
Warning : Injuries and a Decepticon outlook on being in debt.  
Rating: PG-13  
Continuity: IDW, post-squishing by Metroplex in Spotlight: Sixshot, post-trial in RiD/MTMTE.  
Characters: Sixshot, Terrorcons.  
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.  
Motivation (Prompt): Eabevella's birthday.

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[* * * * * ]

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Wrong

Everything ran counter to how it should have been. He was weak; they were strong. They were as gentle as they knew how to be, and he submit as much as he could to them. It worked. That didn't meant any of it felt right.

Inbox

Soundwave queried where they were. Starscream demanded they return. The Autobots wanted to lock them up. Hung-Grr deleted the messages filling his inbox.

Outlook

They'd have to move on at some point. They couldn't stay here doing nothing. Raiding for supplies and trading for what they couldn't steal wasn't a living. It was a temporary means of getting by. There was no future in it, only getting through the days, hour by hour.

Aimless

At least when they were fighting, there had been an end to plan for. Win the fight, secure the area, wait for orders, and move on to the next battle. The war had ended. They didn't have anything to aim for anymore, and not just in terms of enemies.

Update

"He's doing better. I think we got his fusion core sealed up, finally."

Edges

It wasn't easy for them, being patient with him. Their first instinct was cruelty. They weren't made to be nursemaids. They were made to be killers, murderers, and thieves. They didn't have any sort of ethical limitations, not even those of mercenaries or soldiers. They were the beasts bred by war. Nitroglycerin and death lured them further. Caring for him took stopping at the edge and struggling to step back.

Kettle

Six Decepticons crammed in a stolen shuttle brewed a tempest in a teakettle. Hun-Grr sent them out on patrols, in pairs to scavenge and in hunting parties for piracy, but homebase was a prefabricated building slapped up beside the parked shuttle. The Terrorcons boiled out of it the minute an argument started.

Space

They had plenty of space to spread out. Their world remained defined by the size of the places they gathered together. Give them five bunks to sleep in, and they'd fight over a single berth.

Re:

Sixshot wasn't on the schedule of who recharged where, but it rotated around his presence. They didn't forward the schedule to him despite that, or maybe because of it.

Stairs

Ambition, like many a Decepticon before them, would be their downfall. The attempt to build a second story failed miserably. Everyone pretended Sixshot's tumble down the flight of stairs hadn't happened, although Sinnertwin and Rippersnapper snickered as they helped the larger mech get up afterward.

Limitation

Laughing at his weakness came back to haunt them later.

Lever

Enough tiny hints wedged under a good opinion could change anyone's mind. Laughter reignited sternly smothered pride. Gratitude soured to sullen anger. The muted affection growing in the language of nuzzled greetings and bumped flanks chilled to disgust. The six of them lived in a small world built on sticking together. Now it moved.

Cartridge

Empty weapons but loaded words. Bang bang, their baby knocked them down.

Rust

Familiarity made it feel like reopening an old wound, feeling the drip of a hot fresh wound and not even noticing because they were just so used to the ache. That made it worse when they looked up and realized who'd stabbed them in the back this time. They hadn't expected contempt from the mech they saved, not after being elbow-deep in his injuries for weeks. They'd seen him brainless. They'd mopped up the fluids he leaked. He'd been welcomed into their berths to recharge and leaned on their shoulders to walk. The little slights and disrespects repaid them in rust.

Domino

It was the smell, as always. An exaggerated sneeze snidely informed Blot he stank, as if he didn't know. Rippersnapper's poor sense of self-worth fell prey next. Blot snarled, his hands curled to claws, and Rippersnapper bristled, but their righteous anger fell flat. There wasn't much to say in their defense, and neither of them had a quick wit to match their clenched fists. They were made for war, not for battles they weren't build to fight. One after another, they fell.

Effervescence

It wasn't much of a confrontation, whatever Sinnertwin bragged later. He held onto his victory high. He didn't mention that Sixshot didn't fight back.

Cutthroat

Words were his most underestimated weapon, and his cruelest.

Whisper

"Let me make something really clear, junkheap. You ain't my team. You ain't even my unit. You're recyclables scraped off the ground on a backwater planet everybody else forgot, and nobody's ever going to come looking there. You're gone. Cybertron don't care. The other 'Cons don't care. The Autobots don't even give a flung rubber seal whether you're alive or dead. We came looking, and I don't think a little appreciation's too much to ask. We like you, yeah, but we like the Monacus buffet tables, too. Those don't say things subvocal about my team."

Rain

Decepticons dealt in violence and fury. They rained blows on each other, but the Terrorcons would only blunt their teeth and claws on his unutrium coating. They weren't stupid, not all of them. They hadn't put him back together only to pull him apart again.

Online

The great wolf head rose, optics coming online as Sixshot looked toward the door. Five sets of feet stomped past the medibay without pause. They would have accepted cool disdain from their hero, but not from the mech who purged on the floor if they didn't filter fuel before giving it to him.

Morning

Four sullen Terrorcons muttered in their bunkroom. Hissed hurt came from inside, disguised as scoffing, bragging, and insults. The door was locked. It rattled just once, tested from the other side, and they went still, all optics on it. After a moment of silence, their visitor wordlessly retreated.

Approve

Hun-Grr was smart enough to figure out what Sixshot had done. They were the Terrorcons. They'd turn on him. That's what they did, that's what Decepticons were known for, and then he'd be able to point at them and say, "This was exactly what I thought you'd do. I was right." Better to push them away than be pushed away.

Coming

If any of them were more prone to introspection, they might have seen this coming. None of them were, however, and it didn't really matter. Terrorcons were the kind of people who saw the inevitable and were enraged, not resigned.

Closet

The medibay was a closet with attitude. They stored all their stolen, bartered, and borrowed medical supplies in it. It had only one door. That made it easily defensible, or it would have if Hun-Grr hadn't just torn the door completely out of the frame.

Pocket

Sometimes they got ahead of themselves and imagined the Phase Sixer in their midst was in better shape than he was. Seeing the reality of crumpled plating and wary optics reminded the Terrorcon leader all over again that this was a patient instead of a commander. Like someone taking a forgotten object out of his pocket, he had pause to contemplate its reality.

Stream

The words came out in a low, furious snarl, tumbling out through a mouth that - for once - wasn't blocked by a chunk of food. Strange, that orders and battle weren't enough to trump his own selfish hunger, but this claimed his full attention.

Hindsight

"Transform," Hun-Grr growled, and it was a demand backed by clawed hands lashing out to dig into vulnerable, open wounds. They'd played along with his refusal to leave altmode so far, but no more. "Time for you to learn what Blot does for this team."

Fever

Something gave in his side with a nasty crunch. His less obviously injured side, interestingly. The forced transformation had probably cracked something important deep inside him. Cold, beady optics watched him limp out of the medibay, unsteady on two feet and gasping quietly as he hunched over to one side. None of them moved to prop him up. He used the wall for support as he followed Hun-Grr past, and hot, fetid air poured over him, satisfaction tainting it thick and heavy.

Lint

Someone still had to take out the trash and clean the oilpan for units of brutal thugs. Blot didn't really get why he was relieved of duties he'd been doing for ages, but a vacation was a vacation.

Buildings

The Terrorcons would live in filth if Hun-Grr hadn't long ago set someone on the job of cleaning up after them. Blot did a good job. One prefab building and shuttle didn't seem like a huge area to keep tidy, but the Terrorcons noticed the difference almost immediately. They made a point of talking about it in front of Blot, and he puffed up on the praise. Sixshot refused to respond to the taunting comments.

Laboratory

Prefab walls were thin. They heard his faltering progress through the building, and his staggering footsteps up into the shuttle. He fell fairly often going out to the junk pile. At night, they listened to the quiet sounds from the medibay and didn't meet each other's optics. Nobody wanted to be the first mech to say maybe they should end Hun-Grr's lesson. Experiment. Test. Whatever its name, they didn't want to be the ones who failed it.

Sanctuary

They pretended not to care when he stopped recharging in their bunkroom, even after they unlocked the door. It was for the best. They were mad at him. With their tempers, they'd rip him a new one in a literal way if he showed up. He should stay in the medibay where he belonged, separate from them.

Fish

A shadow supervised the slow progression of tidiness through the common room, fishing for a reaction. Sixshot didn't look up at whoever was observing him. Either it pained him to tip his helm back that far, or it shamed him to be seen restocking a snack jar like a common grunt soldier.

Insertion

"You get why I'm doing this?" Hun-Grr said between orders, and Sixshot gave him a dull look of confusion. The point wasn't subtle. It was less a point than a blunt object slowly bludgeoning his dignity into oblivion.

Pancake

He was a stubborn glitch, but he was still their stubborn glitch. They'd pulled him out of a footprint. Walking was a triumph in that light. The days were a haze of exhaustion, but awake was awake. They charged into the medibay in a pack the day he didn't wake up.

Message

If this was some sort of cosmic message about the inadvisability of hard objects associating with rocks, it was returned to sender unopened.

Duct tape

He recharged like the dead, of course. Sometimes he noticed the little things that were fixed overnight. Sometimes he didn't. Even so, he never woke up while they pieced him back together with soldering irons and tape. Working him into statis actually seemed a better solution than anything else they'd tried.

Nine

At nine weeks, Blot didn't miss his responsibilities, but they missed what they'd had. Somebody might have said something, but nobody knew how to break the cycle of pride and jeering comments. For all their scoffing at his stubbornness, none of them were willing to make the first move.

Brave

They'd murder anyone who dared call them cowards. That didn't make them brave.

Draft

Someone could use their fragged-up group as the first draft. All the things that didn't work could be corrected out, and maybe the final edit could actually function right. Of course, the mistakes were often easier to see from the outside, looking in.

Syntax

The words he said didn't change. He spoke rarely, but even less now. The entire meaning of a sentence could be changed by moving one word, but he spoke in single-word sentences whenever possible. How he said them changed, nonetheless.

Pen

His apologies were tucked into the carcass they'd been gorging on, like a fortune cookie of smeared fluids, rent metal, and carefully chosen glyphs. They might not have even found the notes if Sinnertwin hadn't choked on his. Hun-Grr had to read Blot's for him. They never found Cutthroat's, but they assumed Hun-Grr had eaten it in the feeding frenzy.

Solitude

Animals didn't forgive. Occasionally, they forgot. In the Decepticons, they got revenge. The concept of forgiveness went against their nature. It made them uneasy. Soft weaklings let their anger go, not Terrorcons, but a killing machine didn't go out of his way to rescue captured mechs. They were beasts of war, but the war was over. Animals had to be people in peace.

Ignore

Nothing felt right. They ignored the feeling. Not being right didn't mean it was wrong.

* * *

[* * * * * ]


End file.
